Dancing in Darkness
by understar
Summary: A snow angel of the worst kind. (Sidestory to Puppet in Pink-- one-shot, OOC?)


(Side-story to Puppet in Pink)

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

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_**Dancing in Darkness**_

"_She didn't 'snap'. That was what they called it, but it simply wasn't true. In order to 'snap', you have to start out as a whole. _

_And Sakura had never been 'whole' to begin with."_

"Come here, Sakura."

The pink-haired toddler froze at the sound of her mother's voice. "What is it, Mommy?" she asked timidly, afraid to hear the answer.

"Come here, Sakura. Just come here." No threat, no drunken slur, nothing but a quiet repetition of a harmless command. "Come here, by the window."

Sensing no danger, Sakura hastened to obey. Bare feet slid hurriedly over the rough carpet until the old brocade curtains, ragged and stained, come into view above her head. Haruno Keiko remained transfixed staring out into the winter twilight.

"Look, Sakura. It's snowing."

The child poised on tiptoe like a miniature ballerina, pressing her nose against the cold glass. A flurry of white flakes fluttered into her vision, just out of reach, or so it seemed. Emboldened, she tugged eagerly on the hem of her mother's moth-eaten bathrobe. "It _is_ snowing, Mommy! It _is_ snowing!"

Keiko glanced down at her daughter, in a motherly way, bordering almost on affection. A smile tugged at her lips.

"Yes." Her words were slow, carefully-formed. "Let's go out and see it, shall we?"

Sakura beamed, too surprised to make a sound, as she followed her mother down the hall. Was this all a dream? Who was this new Mommy? And, more importantly, what had happened to the old one? The mean lady who threw bottles, and chairs, and sometimes tables?

She kept her questions to herself. She didn't want this to end.

Keiko threw open the door with unusual abandon, letting in a blast of frosty air. The pink-haired girl trembled in her thin nightshirt, shrinking away from the glacial night. Her mother noticed this and gently pushed her daughter forward. The smile on her face widened.

"Go out and dance for me, Sakura."

It was a sinister smile.

"Bu-but Mommy! It's...it's cold out...and I'm in my pajamas, and I don't have my shoes-" A hard shove from behind sent her tumbling down the cement-block steps, into the snow-draped front lawn.

"Nobody _asked_ you." Keiko loomed tall in the doorway, serene, nearly god-like. "Now get up."

Slowly, Sakura rose, shivering as the icy breeze whipped her hair. A small patch of red stood out against the paleness, barely noticeable, pooling in the indent where she'd fallen. One might have thought it a fruity color, this red, like the blush of a spilt cherry snow-cone.

Her mother's expression darkened at the sight of the blood.

"And you had to go and spoil the perfection, you stupid girl! It was all so pure and white before, but you spoiled it! You'll do one more hour of dancing, just for that! Now stand straight and dance for me! Dance!"

Sakura's head was throbbing and her teeth were chattering and she felt the warm trickle of crimson down her cheek. But she also felt her mother's glare, more painful than anything else. And so she began to dance.

First, a shaky twirling among the drifts, then a fearful pirouette. Trying to ignore the tendrils of freezing, wind-driven snow twining around her like a pit full of snakes. She danced and she danced, and she danced some more.

And Keiko laughed.

"Dance, my child, dance! Dance, little snowflake, dance! Dance, my dear doll! Dance, you obedient little puppet!"

And the puppet did dance, every step she'd ever learned and some that she made up. She twirled and leaped and spun and spun. And after a very long time, much too long of a time, she spun right into the pure white. It came up to meet her, as she predicted it would, and that was that for a while, at least.

She could still hear Keiko's laugh, as a promise of the future.

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"Look, mama, look!" A wide-eyed boy peered out the window, across the street, into the growing darkness. 

"What is it?" his mother asked, gazing patiently up at her son.

"There's an angel out there!"

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. Yes, there is!" The boy's face was one of childish wonder. "There's an angel out there, and she's dancing in the snow!"

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Something I just _had_ to write. 


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